Victims Training To Rebuild After Katrina

(CBS)  At 67, Luther McCants is starting a new career.

"Well I was retired," he tells CBS News correspondent Randall Pinkston. "I was collecting social security!"

That was before Hurricane Katrina which heavily damaged McCants' Mississippi home and wiped out 350,000 others along the Gulf Coast.

Almost two years after the storm, rebuilding is slow - in part because of a shortage of construction workers.

So the National Association of Home Builders and Freddie Mac created a school in Gulfport to train new workers.

All of them, including McCants, Jack Perry and Kya Blalock are victims of Katrina.

"My house was gutted," Blalock remembers.

Perry's house was damaged, too, and he lost his job when the Grand Casino was demolished during the storm.

"Everyone around here is going to need electrical work, plumbing work," Perry said. "It's going to be a constant job."

Eddie Collins is in charge of "Operation Reconstruct Mississippi," which is free for trainees. They even get a stipend.

"We're giving them the basic employability skills, the tools, the knowledge of making it in construction and home-building," Collins said.

Because of the desperate need for construction workers all along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, they will have no trouble finding employment. The starting salary will be 12 to 14 dollars an hour.

Carl Hamilton of the Home Builders Association of the Mississippi Coast says his subcontractors are desperate for the help. He said maybe 10 percent of the homes in the area have been rebuilt. But, it's not just rebuilding homes, Hamilton said, there's infrastructure to be rebuilt, too.

"If you don't have water and sewer you can't rebuild the house," he said, "chicken and the egg."

This group of trainees will graduate in mid-September, and McCants is looking forward to his new job.

His goal: "To help rebuild my house and be in on the rebuilding of the whole coast."

Now he has the tools to get started.